


Dear Brian,

by Paladog_Vyt



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Letters, Moral Dilemmas, Morality, Podfic Welcome, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paladog_Vyt/pseuds/Paladog_Vyt
Summary: As a quasi-therapeutic exercise, Brian begins to write letters to himself across opposite sides of the MJE/EJM Morality Switch.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 89





	Dear Brian,

**Author's Note:**

> You're selfish. You don't care about the future, you just want to feel good about your actions in the present. Well, that's not who I am.  
> -  
> [You] burn the present for the sake of a brighter future and act surprised when all it holds is ash!
> 
> \--From Paranatural by Zack Morrison

“I don’t know, Marius it’s just…surreal,”

Doctor Baron Marius von Raum was the crew’s doctor, not that they needed one, and therapist, not that they wanted one. Officially, he was neither of his titles, but when Brian felt the need to talk to _someone_ , Marius was the closest he could get- even if it meant being sneaky about it to avoid Jonny’s mockery.

“Have you considered journaling?”

  
“I don’t see how it would help. Memory isn’t the problem. I _remember_ everything I do, I remember my reasons, and I remember wholeheartedly believing them. But the rationale falls apart on the other side of the switch. It’s like… it’s like dream logic. While you’re in the dream, you just _know_ things and everything makes perfect sense and feels obvious, and once you wake up you can remember feeling that way, but all the things you knew are suddenly absurd and nonsensical.”

“Write letters to yourself, then. Try engaging in a philosophical discussion, explaining your rationale to the other side,”

Marius still wasn’t a therapist, so Brian had his doubts this would work. But he wasn’t going to get a better idea from anyone else, and this one at least involved no violence, so there was little risk in trying. He got himself a little brown leather-bound journal, and resolved to check in each time the switch flipped, at least. He tucked a Hanged Man tarot card into the inside cover. In Camelot, he had been tried and hanged as a criminal, and had stayed in the gallows as a good-faith attempt to properly fulfill an impossible capital sentence. It was Jonny that evoked the arcana in adapting the story to song, and Brian had been considering his relationship to the archetype ever since. He kept the card in the journal as a reminder to the letters’ purpose- metamorphosis, contemplation, letting go, and most importantly, new perspectives.

* * *

Dear Brian,

I am making the decision, up front, to not add a qualifier to my name- our name? in these letters. I am not “MJE” and you are not “EJM”, or whatever other ridiculous nicknames the crew comes up with. The fact that I sometimes carry the moniker “Good Brian” reassures me that it is my perspective is the one others in the universe would deem righteous. But in the spirit of this exercise, and because it is wrong to be pointlessly rude and hurtful, I will not stoop to calling you “Evil Brian”. We are both and always Brian, even though it feels so alien to think of you sometimes. But that is the point of this, isn’t it? To bridge the gap. We have more in common than not, after all. One body, one memory, shared preferences for every sensation, shared relationships to our friends. Your practice helps my muscle memory for playing the drums, and vice versa.

These are shallow, simple things of course. It is the moral question where we differ. Here the infinite axis splits us. I could try to explain to you the rules- the principles, the lines that help guide a life along its path just as the stars help us guide the ship. But I understand my conviction is not, in itself, enough to persuade you. Instead I will focus on what meager shared ground we have. We both want to help people. I _know_ that, even though your methods of helping are, shall we say, counterproductive. So, I will ask it plainly- how can you hurt people? There is already so much evil in the universe. Mistakes happen, accidents happen. But I can’t imagine _any_ reward high enough to convince me to deliberately, knowingly cause someone pain.

Yours, 

Brian

* * *

Dear Brian,

Interesting how apophasis seems to slip right past your proclaimed politeness. The fact that you don’t think you hurt people is so bafflingly preposterous that I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad. You live in a series of moments, only ever thinking about the present decision in isolation. Who cares who you stepped on to get there, right? Who cares who will get hurt further down the line? You can’t see past your own nose to all the people you’ve harmed, so you pat yourself on the back and consider yourself righteous. It’s not even selfishness or egotism, it’s just sheer ignorance. It’s a waste of a heart. If we were going to simply make algorithmic decisions based on universally applying rules without considering any kind of nuance or context, we might as well have been a pure automaton. The Toy Soldier has more depth. Take the blinders off. Consider the future, the endpoint of where your decisions lead. There is no “not hurting people” in this world, sacrifices sadly need to be made, but the harm can be much less if you see past the moment.

Yours,

Brian

* * *

Dear Brian,

You talk a lot about the future and the end goal, so I’m going to indulge you. What is actually the end result of your philosophy? What limit does it approach? If everything is permissible for the greater good, then anything can be justified, anyone killed, anything destroyed so long as it serves your purposes. Where will that leave you? If ending evil happens to resolve as apocalyptic destruction, will you stand all alone atop a dead world and call it “good”? In all your eagerness for the future, you destroy the present, and leave nothing for the future to be built from. You call me a waste of our heart, but what is the point of having a human heart if you reduce everything to abstracted math and cold calculations?

I also can’t help but notice that it is easy to talk about sacrifices when it is other people being sacrificed. You condemn my ‘stepping on people’ when it is the entire basis for your position. The beauty of my principles and rules is that they exist outside of me, and outside of my personal taste, my subjective judgement and perception. I am grateful that, for your skewed view of my beliefs, you could see ego had no place in them. I can only be fair to myself and others, taking the harm or benefit that comes to me equally. That fairness matters to me.

Yours,

Brian

* * *

Dear Brian,

And if hurting one person would result in a paradise, would you call that “evil”? The end result of your philosophy is at least equally preposterous. You can get on your high horse about fairness and consistency, but what benefit does that bring anyone? What good did it do for you to politely hang on the gallows for all those years, when you could have achieved all the same help and more, if you were actually active in town? Would you have let the preacher die? Do you think the mob was right in what it did to me?

Yours,

Brian

* * *

Dear Brian,

I know you will hate this answer, but in a nutshell, yes. If you care to, please ask Ivy to furnish you with a copy of _The Brothers Karamazov_. Ivan will put this point in much prettier language than I can. But it boils down to this: if you (or some omnipotent deity) were to show me “Look, here’s the universal plan, here’s how all the pain is justified, here is the absolutely paradisal end state where everyone is happy, so long as you let one innocent suffer”, I would wholeheartedly refuse.

It doesn’t _matter_ whether the end result is good or bad, if the foundational principles are themselves evil. You act as if I am naïve, and ignore the negative consequences. In truth, the complexity of the world is exactly why outcome doesn’t justify anything. I can’t control the final output- my agency, and therefore my morality, is in the input I can give unto the world. The point is to create a system that allows good to flourish- and exceptions, however tempting, fundamentally undermine and weaken that system. Someone that secretly eavesdrops is violating a boundary, even if they don’t happen to overhear something. Someone that poisons someone is morally wrong, even if by chance they invent a new medicine. “But it worked out in the end” does not paper over the intent, and ultimately is the mark of someone who fundamentally doesn’t care about others.

Let me bring it back to the examples you gave. Yes, I stayed on the gallows, because the law had condemned me and it would be wrong to escape justice. Upholding the principle that Camelot was a town of law and order, where actions had consequences and crime was punished, was more important than my personal convenience.

Interesting that you would claim something before our mechanization- when we both shared a single “I”- for yourself alone. As if you are the Ur-Brian and I merely a later addition. Does such a lie comfort you? I’m sure you think that makes it right. But I admit, the decision Brian made then is closer to your heart than to mine. Had it been me, I would have not saved the priest. Not because of any judgement of him as a person, but because _I cannot be the person that acts against his bodily autonomy._ Even if I think he’s wrong. Even if I think it’s a tragic loss. That he gets to choose what happens with regards to his body, life, and death matters more than my subjective opinion on what choice he makes. And if I were to be the kind of person to override that choice (as you would), what would stop me from doing it to others? To dismissing their rights and wills when I deemed them unworthy or unsuitable?

So yes, the town was right to shoot you- us, though we were not yet an us- into space. And I’m not saying that because we were found, and it all “worked out” at the end. That’s _your_ reasoning. If we had died in the Void, it would have been the conclusion of a punishment for wrongdoing. It would have been tragic. It would have been terrible. But it would have been right. The thing about rules is, they don’t care how you feel about them. And if I am ever put in the position of choosing principles over self-preservation, you know which one I will choose every time, without hesitation. Because, by believing myself to be the kind of person to surpass morality, or be able to judge it, I would inherently betray it.

Yours,

Brian

* * *

Dear Brian,

Your absolutist philosophy was born and died millennia ago, and should have been left there in the dust. It is a child’s first conception of morality, before capacity for critical thought. You dare go as far as claiming you understand the complexity of the world? You ignore it, reduce it, boil it away to nothing. All the color of the world is bleached away into black and white, and the shapes of how you perceive things are distorted by it.

You can’t say you care about people when they don’t at all factor into your decision process. You paint me as selfish, bending and sneaking around the rules for my own ends. What you are seeing is the winding path that must be followed in difficult terrain, when one does not brutally bulldoze forward regardless of what’s in the way.

Constantly judging my own morality is how I temper it, how I purify it from my own desires and biases. By what culture, by what standard, by what lens is each option good or bad? If my duty is to people, then what people? What counts as people? If my duty is to life, what life? What is help, what is harm? How far ahead can I see, and how clearly? What am I missing? To seek the greater good is to be questioning it, over and over, constantly challenging myself to be better. It is a grueling and endless process. I would almost be glad that you are spared the difficulty, if it didn’t mean your continuing to blithely careen though life. I invite you to self-judgement, and earnestly hope you achieve it- though I know it will deeply hurt you- for you will become better for it.

Yours,

Brian


End file.
